Canada’s Law Against Duelling

Imagine being angry with someone and deciding that the only honourable way to settle the dispute was to meet at dawn, weapons in hand, and fight a duel.

It sounds like something from a nineteenth-century novel, but Canada actually had a law specifically dealing with duelling.

Section 71 of the Criminal Code made it a criminal offence to challenge another person to a duel, attempt to provoke someone into challenging another person, or accept a challenge to fight a duel. The punishment could be up to two years in prison.

And there was a reason for a law like this.

For centuries, duelling had been associated with honour. A disagreement, particularly an insult, could escalate into a formal challenge. Two people might arrange a location, choose weapons and face each other while seconds or witnesses stood nearby.

But the law took a very different view: an argument was not a legal justification for two people to settle their differences by potentially killing one another.

What's fascinating is how long this old-fashioned offence remained in Canadian criminal law. Section 71 survived into the modern Criminal Code, even though the world of gentlemen settling insults with pistols had largely disappeared.

Then, in 2018, Parliament repealed section 71 as part of legislation removing a number of obsolete or redundant provisions from the Criminal Code.

So today, you won't find a Canadian law that specifically says, “Thou shalt not duel.”

But for generations, Canada had exactly that.

A law against settling an argument the old-fashioned way, with pistols at dawn.